Great questions today. Great, great questions.
It’s the same reason why childhood and adolescence last much longer today than they did in 1825. The world is more complicated. The subjectivation (meaning becoming your own person with a stable sense of self) lasts about a decade longer than it did 200 years ago. Learning anything that counts as a career (and not just a job) and brings status and money takes longer because everything that is valued has grown in complexity. Everything simpler has been automated or doesn’t count as a career.
How does this coexist with constantly reinventing yourself? I have bad news. Or good, if you are really neoliberalized. You need to be preparing for the new career while working full-time in the existing one. If you split your time investment in 3 buckets, this is what the result should look like:
A good neoliberal does not work an 80-hour week and fall asleep over a stale takeout burrito. That’s the life of a good neoliberal’s slaves. A good neoliberal does 3 hours of tennis a week and an hour of yoga / jogging daily, spends 30 minutes slowly preparing The Very Special Salad with The Very Special Drink, practices ukelele, meditates in a forest, and works in the short bursts between tending lovingly to himself. And achieves more than the slave does in 80 miserable hours. His career is to be himself and manifest this himself-ness in whatever area comes by without any specific one meriting emotional attachment. You can’t look at the time dedicated to any area as wasted if you spend most of it feeding the first two buckets.
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Is it really that the careers are that much more complex though? Or is it just credentialing rackets (people already in the career erecting barriers to keep fresh younger talent out) and employers offloading training costs onto (future) employees?
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That’s all true but true competence in any field comes working hard at acquiring those skills and that needs a lot of time and effort. The yoga/tennis route seems to be for people who’ve already “made it.” No?
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You can’t acquire if you aren’t all there physically and mentally.
OT, Pete Hegseth gave a speech today, and it’s really good. Those poor fat generals and the military dudes in dresses.
Very enjoyable.
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This is good news for someone who doesn’t like working, bad news for someone who doesn’t like learning marketable skills 😛
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